Thrillers are hot right now and have been for some time. They can be intimidating to write, however. If you’re looking to dive into the thriller game, this month’s interviewee has some tips to get you started and keep your readers on their toes.
What do readers demand from the stories they read? They expect to be entertained, to learn something, to be intellectually challenged, charmed, or tickled. Readers want to have questions raised and answered and they love action, chases, and puzzles. But above all, readers read to feel something, to be stirred emotionally.
That’s why learning to craft an emotion-baited hook can be one of the most powerful tools in your toolbox. So let’s take a look at how to do that.
If your aim is to write engaging fiction—stories that people will read and clamor for, even shell out their hard-earned cash to acquire—there is something very important you need to understand. You are an entertainer. And that means you need to know how to write a hook that will capture your reader and keep her turning the pages.
Nonfiction writing seems like a completely different bear than writing fiction. How do you gather your ideas and present them in a coherent, interesting way? And if someone else has written on the same topic before, should you even bother?
In today’s article, Leslie Malin gives us some great insight into how she came around to writing her first nonfiction book and the lessons she had to learn along the way. And she reminds us that writing nonfiction requires some of the same skills as writing fiction: storytelling.
Ever read about another author’s success and become frustrated? It doesn’t have to be that way. If we can learn to receive author success stories and testimonies with the right attitude, they can be amazing learning tools that will help us become better writers.
There’s an old, worn-out adage about writing: Write what you know. Which is fine if you’re writing about the day-to-day life of Earth, but what if you want to write about a world you don’t know? Today, we’re talking with science fiction author Mike Van Horn about world building and immersing your readers in that world.
